Caesar or Nothing Part 30

"But I think that knowing things not only is not tiresome," said Kennedy, "but is a great satisfaction."

"You think even learning things is a satisfaction?"

"Thousands of years ago one could know things almost without learning them; nowadays in order to know, one has to learn. That is natural and logical."

"Yes, certainly. And the effort to learn about useful things seems natural and logical to me too, but not to learn about merely agreeable things. To learn medicine and mechanics is logical; but to learn to look at a picture or to hear a symphony is an absurdity."

"Why?"

"At any rate the neophytes that go to see a Rafael picture or to hear a Bach sonata and have an exclamation all ready, give me the sad impression of a flock of lambs. As for your sublime pedagogues of the Ruskin type, they seem to me to be the fine flower of priggishness, of pedantry, of the most objectionable bourgeoisie."

"What things your brother is saying!" exclaimed Kennedy.

"You shouldn't notice him," said Laura.

"Those artistic pedagogues enrage me; they remind me of Protestant pastors and of the friars that go around dressed like peasants, and who I think are called Brothers of the Christian Doctrine. The pedagogues are Brothers of the Esthetic Doctrine, one of the stupidest inventions that ever occurred to the English. I don't know which I find more ridiculous, the Salvation Army or Ruskin's books."

"Why have you this hatred for Ruskin?"

"I find him an idiot. I only skimmed through a book of his called _The Seven Lamps of Architecture_, and the first thing I read was a paragraph in which he said that to use an imitation diamond or any other imitation stone was a lie, an imposition, and a sin. I immediately said: 'This man who thinks a diamond is the truth and paste a lie, is a stupid fool who doesn't deserve to be read.'"

"Yes, all right: you take one point of view and he takes another. I understand why Ruskin wouldn't please you. What I do not understand is why you find it absurd that if a person has a desire to penetrate into the beauties of a symphony or a picture, he should do so. What is there strange in that?"

"You are right," said Caesar; "whoever wants to learn, should. I have done so about financial questions."

"Is it true that your brother knows all about questions of money?"

Kennedy asked Laura.

"He says so."

"I haven't much belief in his financial knowledge."

"No?"

"No, I have not. You are a sort of dilettante, half nihilist, half financier. You would like to pa.s.s for a tranquil, well-balanced man, for what is called a philistine, but you cannot compa.s.s it."

"I will compa.s.s it. It is true that I want to be a philistine, but a philistine out in the real world. All those great artists you people admire, Goethe, Ruskin, were really philistines, who were in the business of being interested in poetry and statues and pictures."

"Moncada, you are a sophist," said Kennedy. "Possibly I am wrong in this discussion," retorted Caesar, "but the feeling I have is right. Artists irritate me; they seem to me like old ladies with a flatulency that prevents their breathing freely."

Kennedy laughed at the definition.

_CHIC AND THE REVOLUTION_

"I understand hating bad kings and conquerors; but artists! What harm do they do?" said Laura.

"Artists are always doing harm to the whole of humanity. They have invented an esthetic system for the use of the rich, and they have killed the Revolution. The _chic_ put an end to the Revolution. And now everything is coming back; enthusiasm for the aristocracy, for the Church; the cult of kings. People look backward and the Revolutionary movement is paralysed. The people that irritate me most are those esthetes of the Ruskin school, for whom everything is religious: having money, buying jewels, blowing one's nose... everything is religious.

Vulgar creatures, lackeys that they are!"

"My brother is a demagogue," said Laura ironically.

"Yes," added Kennedy; "he doesn't like categories."

"But each thing has its value whether he likes it or not."

"I do not deny different values, or even categories. There are things of great value in life; some natural, like youth, beauty, strength; others more artificial, like money, social position; but this idea of distinction, of aristocratic fineness, is a farce. It is a literary legend in the same style as the one current in novels, which tells us that the aristocrats of old families close their doors to rich Americans, or like that other story Mrs. Marchmont was talking to us of, about the Jewish ladies who were crazy to become Catholics."

"I don't see what you are trying to prove by all this," said Laura.

"I am trying to prove that all there is underneath distinguished society is money, for which reason it doesn't matter if it is destroyed. The cleverest and finest man, if he has no money, will die of hunger in a corner. Smart society, which thinks itself superior, will never receive him, because being really superior and intelligent is of no value on the market. On the other hand, when it is a question of some very rich brute, he will succeed in being accepted and feted by the aristocrats, because money has a real value, a quotable value, or I'd better say, it is the only thing that has a quotable value."

"What you are saying isn't true. A man doesn't go with the best people merely because he is rich."

"No, certainly; not immediately. There is a preparatory process. He begins by robbing people in some miserable little shop, and feels himself democratic. Then he robs in a bank, and at that period he feels that he is a Liberal and begins to experience vaguely aristocratic ideas. If business goes splendidly, the aristocratic ideas get crystallized. Then he can come to Rome and go into ecstasies over all the humbugs of Catholicism; and after that, one is authorized to acknowledge that the religion of our fathers is a beautiful religion, and one finishes by giving a tip to the Pope, and another to Cardinal Verry, so that they will make him Prince of the Ec.u.menical Council or Marquis of the Holy Crusade."

"What very stupid and false ideas," exclaimed Laura. "Really I appreciate having a brother who talks in such a vulgar way."

"You are an aristocrat and the truth doesn't please you. But such are the facts. I can see the chief of the bureau of Papal t.i.tles. What fun he must have thinking up the most appropriate t.i.tle for a magnate of Yankee tinned beef or for an ill.u.s.trious Andean general! How magnificent it would be to gather all the Bishops _in partibus infidelium_ and all the people with Papal t.i.tles in one drawing-room! The Bishop of Nicaea discussing with the Marquis of the Holy Roman Empire; the Marchioness of Easter Sunday flirting with the Bishop of Sion, while the Patriarchs of Thebes, Damascus, and Trebizond played bridge with the sausage manufacturer, Mr. Smiles, the pork king, or with the ill.u.s.trious General Perez, the hero of Guachinanguito. What a moving spectacle it would be!"

"You are a clown!" said Laura.

"He is a finished satirist," added Kennedy.

_CaeSAR'S PLAN_

After lunch, Laura, Kennedy, and Caesar went into the salon, and Laura introduced the Englishman to the San Martino girls and the Countess Brenda. They stayed there chatting until four o'clock, at which time the San Martinos got ready to go out in a motor car, and Laura, with the Countess and her daughter, in a carriage.

Caesar and Kennedy went into the street together.

"You are awfully well fixed here," said Kennedy, "with no Americans, no Germans, or any other barbarians."

"Yes, this hotel is a hive of petty aristocrats."

"Your sister was telling me that you might pick out a very rich wife here, among the girls."

"Yes, my sister would like me to live here, in a foreign country, in cowlike tranquillity, looking at pictures and statues, and travelling pointlessly. That wouldn't be living for me; I am not a society man. I require excitement, danger.... Though I warn you that I am not in the least courageous."

"You're not?"

"Not at all. Not now. At moments I believe I could control myself and take a trench without wavering."

"But you have some fixed plan, haven't you?"

"Yes, I expect to go back to Spain, and work there."